Removing an OS on a Multiple Operating System PC

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Guest

I inherited an older PC with WinME on the C: drive. I went ahead and
installed WinXP on the D: drive. The PC got slow, I formatted the C: drive,
installed XP onto it, and then formatted the D: drive.

Everything works fine except for a DOS-based screen that comes up early in
the boot process and gives me the option of two versions of XP as the OS. Of
course the second version is bogus (remember, I formatted the D: drive), but
it takes 30 extra seconds for the PC to boot up while this screen waits.
It's not a big issue, but I would love to have the boot process go right to
the correct version of XP (resident on the C: drive) and not hang for 30
seconds. Any thoughts on how to do this?

Thanks.
 
Here are two ways to get rid of the boot screen:

Safe method
Go to Start -> Control Panel -> System.
On the Advanced page select Startup and Recovery.
Change the time to display operating systems to 0.
Click OK twice.

Correct method.
Go to Start -> Run and type msconfig in the Open box.
On the Boot.ini page select "Check all boot paths".
You should be asked if you want to delete the bogus version.
Click on Yes.
Click OK.
 
Nepatsfan:

Thanks for the quick and essentially correct answer: I really appreciate it.
I did want you to know, however, that XP won't let it go: after I did it and
rebooted, a dialog box popped up that indicated I should click on the "Normal
Startup" box under the General tab (in msconfig). Doing so, of course,
returns the bogus XP to the OS choice list. So I've kept the box next to
"Selective Startup" checked (along with all the sub-boxes below it). Please
advise if this will cause any problems you know of.

Thanks again.
 
Leaving Msconfig with Selective Startup checked will cause no
problems. My suggestion would be to leave it that way.

What you saw is normal behavior for XP. Whenever you make a
change with msconfig that box will show up on restart . Make sure
you check the "don't show this again" box. Sorry for not
mentioning that earlier.

If you really want to have msconfig set to Normal Startup then
you're going to have to edit the registry. Here's how:

Go to Start -> Run and type regedit in the Open box.
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\MSConfig\state
In the right hand pane, right click on boot.ini and select
modify.
Change the value to 0.
Close the editor.
Open msconfig and see if you now have Normal Startup selected.

Keep in mind that editing the registry is a risky procedure.
 
JP said:
I inherited an older PC with WinME on the C: drive. I went ahead and
installed WinXP on the D: drive. The PC got slow, I formatted the C: drive,
installed XP onto it, and then formatted the D: drive.

Everything works fine except for a DOS-based screen that comes up early in
the boot process and gives me the option of two versions of XP as the OS. Of
course the second version is bogus (remember, I formatted the D: drive), but
it takes 30 extra seconds for the PC to boot up while this screen waits.
It's not a big issue, but I would love to have the boot process go right to
the correct version of XP (resident on the C: drive) and not hang for 30
seconds. Any thoughts on how to do this?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

You can simply edit boot.ini (at C:\boot.ini) with Notepad. Just remove
the operating system option line that contains "partition(x)", where x is
the no. of the parition where the bogus OS resides. Also, just to be sure,
you can set the timeout=0, although that's not needed. Then save the
file with ctl-s and exit Notepad. Be sure that the C: drive is chosen as
the boot partition by checking with Disk Management that the C:
partition is the "active" partition (it probably is). If it's not marked, you
can rt-clk on the partition in the graphic display of the hard drive, and
if "Mark this Partition Active" is grayed out, it's active.

*TimDaniels*
 
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